It’s officially been one year shy of a decade since Rihanna last released an album, with the pop star celebrating nine years since the debut of her critically acclaimed LP Anti on Tuesday (Jan. 28).
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To mark the occasion, the superstar shared a montage of sultry music video and performance footage from her 2016 era, which she paired with Anti’s album-opening SZA collaboration, “Consideration.”
“happy ANTIversary,” the Fenty mogul wrote, adding a red balloon emoji.
Featuring Billboard Hot 100 hits “Work,” “Kiss It Better” and “Love on the Brain,” Anti spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and has since remained on the chart for a total of 456 weeks. Ri has only lent her voice to sporadic collaborations and a few singles post-Anti — including “Born Again” and “Lift Me Up” for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, scoring Oscar and Grammy nods for the latter — but has largely stayed focused on building her Fenty empire.
Even so, the musician has kept fans’ hopes up through the years by teasing at numerous points that a new LP was coming. In April last year, she told Interview that she had “a lot of visual ideas” for her ninth studio album but not the songs to back them up, adding, “Maybe the visual ideas are leading me to the songs that I need to make.”
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Two months later, she said that she was “starting over” on her ninth album. “I don’t want to neglect the songs that I have, so I actually want to go back and listen to stuff with new ears,” she told Entertainment Tonight at the time. “I have been working on the album for so long that I kinda put all that stuff aside, and now I’m prepared to go back in the studio. I’m gonna start — give me a second!”
See Ri’s post celebrating Anti below.
